


my heart has thawed and continues to beat

by loonyBibliophile



Series: maybe i won't die alone [5]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Autistic Cassandra Cillian, F/M, Pre-Relationship, autistic headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 19:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11812518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyBibliophile/pseuds/loonyBibliophile
Summary: “Caz?” Ezekiel popped his head into the alcove, where Cassandra was still settled on the floor with a teacup. “Are you okay?” he frowned, moving to sit down beside her.“Yeah, Jenkins was just helping me practice. I figured you deserved a break.” she said with a forced chuckle and a stiff attempt at a joking elbow to the ribs.~please read previous entries first~





	my heart has thawed and continues to beat

“Caz?” Ezekiel popped his head into the alcove, where Cassandra was still settled on the floor with a teacup. “Are you okay?” he frowned, moving to sit down beside her. 

“Yeah, Jenkins was just helping me practice. I figured you deserved a break.” she said with a forced chuckle and a stiff attempt at a joking elbow to the ribs. 

“I don’t mind helping you, Cassandra.” he said, his voice suddenly uncharacteristically serious. Cassandra smiled, glad he picked up on the insecurity implicit in her joke. 

“I know. But thank you.” she offered him a small smile “Were you looking for me?”

“Yeah! Okay, so, I got bored and I decided to take the back door somewhere random, and I ended up in Portland, Maine, and I found a cryptozoology museum and I thought you might want to go? I figured we could take some notes and stuff from here, see if we can find anything that’s not total bullshit. Then we could grab lunch, isn’t Maine famous for its lobster, or something?” Ezekiel grinned over at her, and Cassandra couldn’t help but smile back. 

“That sounds great, actually. If I practice anymore today I’ll probably send myself into overload. Or give myself a migraine. Or both.” she made a face, wrinkling her nose, and tugged on the braids of her beanie, tapping her toes against the floor. “Is Jake coming?”

“Oh, I could ask him if you wanted, but I was thinking it would just be us?” There was an unusual note of self consciousness in Ezekiel’s voice, and Cassandra cocked her head at him. 

“Oh! I’d love to hang out with just you Ezekiel, you know that.” she beamed, and started to lift herself up from the floor. “Let me grab a few things, okay?”

“Sure. Meet you at the door.” 

Near the door, Jenkins was leaning against a mostly empty desk. 

“Hello, Mr. Jones.”

“Hey again, Jenkins.” Ezekiel grinned at the older man and then went to calibrate the back door. He wanted it to drop them in a nearby building, not the museum itself. Cassandra would feel better about the whole thing if they entered properly and paid the admission. 

“You know, don’t you?” Jenkins said, equal parts cryptic and questioning. Ezekiel looks at him for a moment, and then nods. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve known for awhile.”

“I thought so.” Jenkins replied, with a tight and decisive nod. “Does she know?”

“I’m honestly not sure. Sometimes I think she must, after all, she’s whip smart, but then she’ll say something or avoid something and I’m not so positive.” Ezekiel drummed his fingers on the desk, glancing down at the floor. 

“It’s going to have to be you, I think, Mr. Jones. Our girl is too cautious. She treasures your friendship a great deal, and I don’t see her taking that leap on her own. It’s a risk, and we all know how she feels about change.” Jenkins smiled gently, then tapped his temple with one finger three times, and then vanished. 

“I know.” Ezekiel said quietly, to the now empty room. “Believe me, I know.”

“Know what?” Cassandra piped up, practically skipping down the stairs with her bag over her shoulder and proper shoes on. 

“Nothing important.” he said, covering his surprise with a fake cough. “Shall we?” his voice was cheeky, and he smirked as he extended his crooked elbow to Cassandra. She grinned and nodded, slipping her arm through his. 

“So what cryptids do you think could be real?” Cassandra asked, leaning into Ezekiel slightly as the left the random warehouse across the street and started walking towards the museum. 

“Well, we know that Nessie’s real, so I’d hazard anything is possible really. As long as it’s not a confirmed scam, like the Fiji Mermaid. I mean, mermaids are obviously real, they just aren’t monkey fish.” 

“I bet Mothman is real. There used to be this documentary on Netflix — Oh, we could watch it when we get home— called ‘The Eyes of the Mothman’ and it was all about Point Pleasant, West Virginia, which is where most of the mothman sightings were, and all the strange things that happened there. Ancient curses, government spies, disappearances. All kinds of stuff. Oh, and aliens. And a bridge collapsing! It’s really very — Oh, damn it, I’m infodumping. Sorry.” Cassandra wrinkled her nose and frowned apologetically. 

“Hey now, don’t be sorry. That sounds cool actually, we should definitely watch it when we get home. We can stop off and get snacks too.” Ezekiel grinned and slipped an arm around Cassandra’s waist, giving her a reassuring squeeze. She returned his smile, bouncing onto her tiptoes a few times, and then leaning into him once more when he left his arm around her waist. The warm and solid feel of him beside her was grounding, and as always, she appreciated it. 

They made their way through the museum, occasionally taking note of something one of them had read about in the files and books held at the library. When confronted with a lifesize fiberglass model of a coelacanth, Cassandra spent several minutes talking about the history of the fish, known as the living fossil, and talking about how and when it was rediscovered, all the while bouncing up onto her toes and occasionally waving her hands around in excitement. Ezekiel smiled at her, listening to every word. 

“It’s horrifying.” Ezekiel said, several minutes later, as they both stood staring at a hyper realistic doll labeled “Reborn(™) doll baby Sasquatch. It was, ostensibly, a baby, covered in hair, with slightly ape like features. 

“As someone who is disturbed by the human like features of most primates and someone who hates babies, this is essentially my worst nightmare.” Cassandra stared down at the doll, perplexed and terrified. 

“They paid for this. On purpose.” Ezekiel was equally baffled. 

“And it wasn’t cheap either. That’s high quality silicone and probably real hair, maybe horse.” she wrinkled her nose. “Let’s move on, yes?”

“Yes, absolutely. Once I get a picture of it. I want to text it to Jake with no context and terrify him.” Ezekiel smirked, snapping a photo with his smartphone, and Cassandra snorted. 

Once they’d taken their time seeing everything in the museum, they headed to the gift shop. Ezekiel bought a ridiculous museum logo baseball cap, and while Cassandra was mulling over the coelacanth merchandise, he picked up a soft, felted finger puppet of Mothman and bought that too. As they left the museum, Cassandra having decided on a small, realistic plush reproduction of the ancient fish, he presented her with the puppet. 

“Ooh!” she grinned, taking it instantly. “It’s so soft!” Cassandra rubbed the small felt puppet against her cheek, enjoying the soft fuzzy feeling of the fabric. “I love it.” her voice was warm, and she leaned into Ezekiel’s side, his arm having found its way around her waist once more. “Thank you. For today, in general, and the puppet.” Flushing slightly, she pressed a gentle, quick kiss to Ezekiel’s cheek. If she saw him flush slightly too, she opted not to say anything. 

While Cassandra didn’t exactly have a lot of experience in the matter, she was—as Ezekiel said— whip smart, and she was cautiously optimistic that this was a date. After all, it had all the telltale signs of a date. It was just the two of them, and she’d even offered to have Jake come along, and Ezekiel had wanted to spend time with just her. He’d bought her admission ticket, actually bought it, and gotten her a gift at the gift shop. Now, they were talking down the quiet street arm in arm, looking for somewhere to eat, with plans to have dinner, go home, and watch a movie and eat dessert together. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask, explicitly, whether or not this was a date. What if she was wrong? It wouldn’t be the first time she misread a situation. Her knowledge of social situations from books and movies and magazines could really only fill in for a genuine ability to understand for so long. So while she wanted to know, desperately wanted to ask if this was a date, if she wasn’t imagining things when she thought Ezekiel seemed to look at her too long to be normal sometimes, she just couldn’t bring herself to. 

They had food at a diner, just a few blocks from the museum. It had been a nice walk, with the sun just beginning to set. It wasn’t that late back at the library, but time zones got to feel a bit meaningless when you jumped around them enough. A breeze came in off the water, not too far from the street they were on, and Cassandra shivered as the pair made their way back to the warehouse the back door dropped them at. 

“Here.” Ezekiel stopped, shrugging out of his flannel over shirt and handing it to Cassandra. 

“Are you sure?” she looked over at him, pausing in her reach for the garment. 

“You’re cold. I’ll be more than fine for a few minutes.” Ezekiel’s voice was warm, and he had a small smile on his face as he pressed the black and grey shirt further into her hands. Cassandra smiled, and ignored the elevation in her heart rate as she pulled the shirt on. It was warm from Ezekiel’s body heat, and soft from wear, and it smelled like his soap. She resisted the urge to bury her nose in the familiar scent. 

“Thank you.” her voice was soft and shy, but she smiled at him as she took his arm once more and they continued their walk. 

“Well, you know.” Ezekiel said, shrugging lightly. “Underdogs gotta look out for each other, yeah?”

“Yeah.” she smiled at him again, ducking her face against his shoulder as they re-entered the library.

**Author's Note:**

> don't worry guys, there's at least one installment left in this series ;)


End file.
